Regardless of your feelings about British royalty, there are moments during Prince Harry’s interview with the ITV journalist Tom Bradby (Virgin Media One, Sunday, 8pm) when the “spare heir” sounds like the most reasonable man on the planet. He was traumatised by the death of his mother. He felt neglected by a father ill suited to lone parenthood. And then, when he had found happiness in marriage, the machinery of the British monarchy was apparently weaponised against him and his wife in the form of damning press leaks. Who wouldn’t be angry?
But there are times, too, when Harry seems oblivious to the gilded world into which he has been born. He talks about the trauma of being told he can’t shave for his wedding (because of royal and military protocol). It is a strange position to be in, without question. But a problem that pales compared with what many people suffer every day, particularly amid a cost-of-living crisis.
He comes across as an earnest individual who is very aware of his privilege as a white man yet is less attuned to the perks of being born into the House of Windsor. At one point in Harry: The Interview he brings up the death, last year, of Queen Elizabeth. He believes that it was the perfect opportunity for reconciliation within the British royal family. He then adds that, “globally, people felt the same”. It may shock him to learn that, globally, nobody much cared either way.
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What the interview lacks is anything in the way of bombshells. The conversation with Bradby comes in advance of the publication, on January 10th, of Harry’s autobiography, Spare. But its juiciest revelations are already in the public domain after the Spanish edition of the book accidentally went on sale early, last week. Bradby revisits the rows between Harry and Meghan and their in-laws William and Kate. And Harry talks about forces within the monarchy – he calls out one by name – briefing against him. He was, he implies, trapped in a web of palace intrigue.
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Harry also believes that questions remain about the death, in 1997, of his mother, Diana, whose car crashed in a tunnel in Paris while fleeing paparazzi. “I had this wonderful Irishman drive me through the tunnel,” he says. “It was almost physically impossible to lose control.”
He blames photographers, saying that when he learned to drive they would “jump on the bonnet of the car”. “I couldn’t see anything. You have to come away with the conclusion that the people who were responsible [for Diana’s death] got away with it.”
Bradby is friendly with the Sussexes. It was to him they turned on a tour of South Africa when Meghan was first struggling with life as a Windsor – saying as much in an interview. And so while this interview was a scoop it was also potentially problematic. Go too hard on Harry and it would turn into an interrogation. But adopt a friendlier tone and Bradby would be accused of going easy on a pal.
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He gets the balance largely right across a 90-minute broadcast that veers from fascinating to indulgent and interminably dull. Harry talks again and again about the British tabloid press, that scourge of his life – prompting the question of whether anyone reads more tabloids than the prince. Potentially not. Bradby presents to him the traditional attitude of the royal family: “You’ve got to let it go ... You can’t fight it all.”
Harry disagrees. “It’s embarrassing for some people that I would I own my story,” he says, referring to his family. “I own the results.”
The conversation finishes with Bradby asking Harry if he is happy in his new home in California, which he shares with Meghan and their two children. “I’m very happy. I’m at peace. I’m in a better place than I’ve ever been before.”
He doesn’t sound it. The impression at the end is of a lost young(ish) man looking for purpose in a life full of privilege but perhaps devoid of meaning.
